Your setup is excellent! I have been occasionally feeding jumbo meal worms to my chickens. They are basically expensive carrion beetle larva. I've been able to breed and raise them, but in addition to the substrate I have to feed them raw oatmeal or some other grain and I can't easily produce the numbers I would like regularly. Thanks for sharing this idea!
I used to start a new colony every year in a few plastic trash cans (shaded and with holes in the bottom with a gap under the lid). I’d dump all my brooder waste into them and wet it down to start it fermenting and the black soldier flies would show up, lay eggs and soon I’d have a ton of larvae. Unfortunately one year I found all the maggots dead and covered with tiny mites of some kind. Now every year they get started and then the mites show up and they all die. I’ve never been able to figure out what the mites are.
There are thousands of these larvae squirming around under my rabbit hutches. My baby chicks have been going nuts eating them. Glad to know WHAT they are!
I figured this technique out when I was in the 4th grade. I had a chick brooder I’d clean out and shovel the poo underneath and the larvae would swarm in the poo piles. But I thought they were mealworms because that year in school we pupated meal worms and they looked similar.
Hi Bullfrog in Clearwater Florida in downtown they have wild chickens that roost in the trees down there if you want to take a trip and get some new blood and maybe hit Key West maybe you can call animal control and they can get you some for free
Very cool. Can I get the dimensions and how many chicks you can brood at a time? I'm also wondering if I can rig up some sort of heat lamp setup on it.
Hey @bullfrog I’m having some bluefaces muletrains and kelso stags coming up in a few months . Let me know if you want some wondering how they would do free ranging . I got some blueface/mclean stags ready in 5 months let me know
I am looking for ideas for a cat proof brooder! This looks amazing. I have a 'worm' tub I wanted for earthworm castings I my greenhouse using guinea pig manure.. Its full of black soldier fly larvae! ...
